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Are hospitals REALLY creaking under the strain of Covid before Christmas? NHS data shows trusts are STILL quieter than last December – with seven times fewer wards close to being full – Daily Mail

  • Intensive care ward occupancy down to 75% from 84% this time last year
  • Hospitals across country declaring incidents as they struggle to cope
  • But wards are less busy too – 89% full compared to 95% in December 2019
  • NHS warns of invisible pressures unique to Covid, such as ward segregation

NHS data still shows hospitals to be quieter than they were this time last year even as coronavirus’s second wave bites and the number of Covid patients approaches levels seen in the crisis’s peak in April.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201218125851/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9043583/NHS-data-suggests-hospitals-England-December.html

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News Opinion Videos

The hidden cost of Covid lockdowns – Channel 4 News

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News

ER visits, long waits climb for kids in mental health crisis – AP News

When children and teens are overwhelmed with anxiety, depression or thoughts of self-harm, they often wait days in emergency rooms because there aren’t enough psychiatric beds.

The problem has only grown worse during the pandemic, reports from parents and professionals suggest.

With schools closed, routines disrupted and parents anxious over lost income or uncertain futures, children are shouldering new burdens many are unequipped to bear.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201205170423/https://apnews.com/article/anxiety-mental-health-boston-coronavirus-pandemic-massachusetts-004adb5ee0ef17ff4b5e2e294e36ff3d

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News

Does the NHS really need protecting? – BBC

A quick glance at the latest data on hospital beds shows there were nearly 13,000 beds free at the end of November.

That’s 50% more than last winter.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201202041425/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55151832

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Publications

Leaks reveal two-thirds of private hospital capacity went unused by NHS – HSJ

  • Two-thirds of the private sector capacity that was block-purchased by NHS England was left unused over the summer
  • Unprecedented block contracts in place for almost all the private hospital capacity, thought to be worth around £400m per month
  • Comes as waiting times for elective care and diagnostic tests have steeply increased
  • Capacity to carry out chemotherapy treatment was among that not fully used
  • Insiders blame confusion and communication over contracts, and some argue the contracts were not needed

https://www.hsj.co.uk/finance-and-efficiency/leaks-reveal-two-thirds-of-private-hospital-capacity-went-unused-by-nhs/7029000.article

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Videos

Dr Mike Yeadon on the UK government’s mismanagement of COVID-19 on – Unlocked

YouTube has removed interview so we have archived the video in the above location. It is currently available on Unlocked Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/unlockedunitedkingdom/videos/vb.112364983833705/409747283542470/

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News

What they DON’T tell you about Covid: Fewer beds taken up than last year, deaths a fraction of the grim forecasts, 95% of fatalities had underlying causes… and how the facts can be twisted to strike fear in our hearts – Daily Mail

  • Despite the fearmongering, the number of Covid-19 deaths is significantly lower than the peak back in April 
  • Latest ONS estimate shows that in the week ending November 14, new infections were already levelling off 
  • GCHQ has embedded a team in Downing Street to provide Boris Johnson with real-time updates of Covid-19
  • Analysts will sift through vast amounts of data to ensure Boris Johnson has the most up-to-date information

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8971669/What-DONT-tell-Covid-facts-twisted-strike-fear-hearts.html

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Publications

Predictive performance of international COVID-19 mortality forecasting models – medRxiv

The Imperial model had larger errors, about 5-fold higher than other models by six weeks. This appears to be largely driven by the aforementioned tendency to overestimate mortality. At twelve weeks, MAPE values were lowest for the IHME-MS-SEIR (23.7%) model, while the Imperial model had the most elevated MAPE (98.8%). Predictive performance between models was generally similar for median absolute errors (MAEs) 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20151233v5.full

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The number of people dying today is the same as it would be any other year’ – Prof. Anthony Brookes, talkRADIO

https://youtu.be/gaOobpwC7oM
  • The vaccine reduces symptoms; may prevent infection but this has not been proven.
  • Mass testing is not the way out and could be very problematic.
  • Around 1% of the population are infected and probably have no symptoms.
  • If you are under 65, there is less risk than the regular flu.
  • The number of people dying is the same as any other year.
  • People of dying of respiratory diseases is about the same.
  • Covid deaths will continue to go up.
  • Hospitals are less full because they’ve increased their capacity; they’re not struggling to cope.
  • Prevalence for the virus has plateaued.
  • We should continue to be careful but COVID-19 is ‘not a major player’
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‘We’ve closed all of Cornwall down for three people in hospital’: Healthcare assistant who publicly resigned claiming she had ‘no work to do for three weeks’ at peak of the pandemic says claim the NHS is overrun is ‘all lies’ – Daily Mail

Shelley Tasker, 43, from Camborne, Cornwall, resigned from Treliske hospital

Healthcare assistant made speech outside Truro cathedral and revealed what’s been going on behind closed doors of NHS hospitals

Claims she had no work for three weeks at height of pandemic due to no patients

“I can tell you on Friday in Treliske there were three people in with Covid. No extra deaths, three – and that covers Treliske, West Cornwall and Hayle hospital…The total deaths from these three hospitals in seven months, is 76 people – that’s about ten people a month over the last seven months, and we have locked down.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8916871/Whistleblower-NHS-worker-reveals-whats-REALLY-going-NHS-hospitals.html

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Opinion

New national lockdown is a mistake – Boris Johnson must keep his promise to release us on December 2 – The Sun

THE fact that Covid cases were already plummeting across London is yet more evidence the new lockdown is a mistake.

Yes, a few hospitals around Britain are under huge strain, as NHS chief Simon Stevens says.

But many have few Covid patients or none.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13122295/the-sun-says-new-national-lockdown-mistake-covid/

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Is the NHS actually QUIETER than usual? Leaked document claims hospitals are 84% full (but last autumn the figure was 92%) – Dail Mail

* Beds have never been less than 85% full for a three-month period since 2010 
* Spring this year was the first time, because patients were turfed out for Covid-19
* And occupancy remains below average levels despite second wave, stat shows 
* Boris Johnson has returned to his ‘protect the NHS’ slogan for second lockdown 

NHS hospitals in England appear quieter than usual for this time of year even though they are treating more than 9,000 patients with coronavirus.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8908693/Coronavirus-NHS-QUIETER-usual-Leaked-document-claims-Englands-hospitals-84-full.html

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News

Hospital intensive care no busier than normal for most trusts, leaked documents show – The Telegraph

Update seen by Telegraph shows capacity tracking as normal for beginning of November, with usual numbers of beds available

Hospital intensive care is no busier than normal for the majority of trusts, leaked documents have shown, raising more questions about whether a second national lockdown is justifiable.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/03/hospital-intensive-care-no-busier-normal-leaked-documents-show/

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Opinion

Three facts No 10’s experts got wrong – Dr Mike Yeadon, Daily Mail

  • We have experience of SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012, while in the UK there are at least four known strains of coronavirus which cause the common cold.
  • Many individuals who’ve been infected by other coronaviruses have immunity to closely related ones such as the Covid-19 virus.
  • Multiple research groups in Europe and the US have shown that around 30 per cent of the population was likely already immune to Covid-19 before the virus arrived – something which Sage continues to ignore.
  • Prof. John Ioannidis, professor of epidemiology at Stanford University in California, have concluded that the mortality rate is closer to 0.2 per cent – 1 in 500 infected die.
  • Around 45,000 Covid deaths in the UK
  • Approximately 22.5million people have been infected – 33.5 per cent of our population – not Sage’s 7 per cent calculation.
  • Not every infected individual produces antibodies.
  • The human immune system has several lines of defence:
    • Innate immunity which is comprised of the body’s physical barriers to infection and protective secretions (the skin and its oils, the cough reflex, tears etc);
    • Inflammatory response (to localise and minimise infection and injury), and the production of non-specific cells (phagocytes) that target an invading virus/bacterium.
    • Antibodies that protect against a specific virus or bacterium (and confer immunity) and T-cells (a type of white blood cell) that are also specific.
  • T-cells that are crucial in our body’s response to respiratory viruses such as Covid-19.
  • World Health Organisation says 750million people have been infected by the virus as of October and almost none have been reinfected.
  • Mortality in 2020 so far ranks eighth out of the last 27 years.
  • The death rate at present is also normal for the time of year – the number of respiratory deaths is actually low for late October.
  • Not only is the virus less dangerous than we are being led to believe, with almost three quarters of the population at no risk of infection.
  • I am convinced this so-called second wave of rising infections and, sadly, deaths will fizzle out without overwhelming the NHS.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8899053/DR-MIKE-YEADON-Three-facts-No-10s-experts-got-wrong.html

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Opinion

Is the NHS at risk of being overwhelmed by Covid? – The Spectator

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has gone back to Plan A, reviving his ‘protect the NHS’ message from March and now wears a facemask with those words on it. The Prime Minister is repeating the slogan. It’s  deeply controversial with senior doctors who fear that it discourages the sick from seeking help – which might explain the 28,000 excess at-home deaths over the last few months. The NHS is worried about this and has countered with its own advert, urging people to seek medical help. I looked at this in my latest Daily Telegraph column.

The NHS has learned much from the first wave of Covid. PPE equipment, for example, is now in bountiful supply. Basic medical techniques – better use of blood thinners, oxygen therapy, steroids etc – are having a big impact on survival rates. When Boris Johnson went into intensive care, his survival chances were about 50 per cent. Now, they would be closer to 70 per cent. The trajectory this time is nowhere near as daunting – the below graph shows the rise of Covid patients needing critical care. As the data shows, intensive care unit (ICU) usage is 13 per cent of what it was at the end of March. (These figures are from the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre.)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-likely-is-the-nhs-to-be-overwhelmed-by-covid-

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News

NHS faces winter with ‘2,000 less’ beds than last year – HSJ

The NHS has ‘significantly less’ beds now than last winter and parts of the system ‘don’t have enough’, a NHS England and Improvement director has admitted.

https://www.hsj.co.uk/quality-and-performance/exclusive-nhs-faces-winter-with-2000-less-beds-than-last-year/7028680.article

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News

Don’t believe the scare stories about hospitals running out of ICU beds – The Telegraph

Even in Manchester, hospitals are faring far better than the headline statistics suggest

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/20/dont-believe-scare-stories-hospitals-running-icu-beds/

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Opinion

An epidemic of failure: Test and Trace that doesn’t work, local lockdowns that don’t make sense, flu deaths counted as Covid-19… and an economy on the brink. We somehow made a crisis worse – Dr. John Lee, Daily Mail

  • The UK Government’s Test and Trace policy isn’t working and is worse than useless.
  • 40 per cent of those asked to name their recent contacts were unable to remember anyone.
  • The tests on which Test and Trace is based are highly unreliable.
  • Covid is a coronavirus and its symptoms are vague: a cough, a raised temperature, the loss of taste and smell — all of which overlap with the symptoms for flu and the common cold.
  • When the procedure goes wrong, it generates a ‘false positive’ result: it indicates an infection where none exists.
  • Even with long-established tests, we’d expect to see false positives in perhaps one per cent of cases. With this one, it could quite conceivably be 5 per cent or higher.
  • This means that if 300,000 tests are processed in a day, perhaps 15,000 or more will generate inaccurate reports of Covid-19 infection.
  • One positive is not necessarily the same as another, but the Government numbers don’t differentiate.
  • Last week, it was reported that just 1,800 out of 110,000 occupied beds in hospitals were taken up by Covid-19 patients.
  • It is likely that those who died were elderly and suffering from co-morbidities such as heart disease and diabetes.
  • But it is also possible that they died from something else entirely — such as flu.
  • The UK Government’s Test and Trace policy isn’t working and is worse than useless.
  • 40 per cent of those asked to name their recent contacts were unable to remember anyone.
  • The tests on which Test and Trace is based are highly unreliable.
  • Covid is a coronavirus and its symptoms are vague: a cough, a raised temperature, the loss of taste and smell — all of which overlap with the symptoms for flu and the common cold.
  • When the procedure goes wrong, it generates a ‘false positive’ result: it indicates an infection where none exists.
  • Even with long-established tests, we’d expect to see false positives in perhaps one per cent of cases. With this one, it could quite conceivably be 5 per cent or higher.
  • This means that if 300,000 tests are processed in a day, perhaps 15,000 or more will generate inaccurate reports of Covid-19 infection.
  • One positive is not necessarily the same as another, but the Government numbers don’t differentiate.
  • Last week, it was reported that just 1,800 out of 110,000 occupied beds in hospitals were taken up by Covid-19 patients.
  • It is likely that those who died were elderly and suffering from co-morbidities such as heart disease and diabetes.
  • But it is also possible that they died from something else entirely — such as flu.
  • Coronaviruses are as old as humanity and have resisted every attempt at a vaccine or a cure. One project to wipe out the common cold was funded for more than 40 years — and got nowhere.
  • Today’s flu vaccines are less than 50 per cent effective, and there is no chance whatever that a hurriedly developed Covid-19 vaccine could be anything like as good as that.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8808609/DR-JOHN-LEE-Test-Trace-doesnt-work-local-lockdowns-dont-make-sense.html

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News

Lockdown ‘could kill 75,000 over five years’ – that’s the OFFICIAL projection of non-COVID deaths – Daily Mail

  • 75,000 people could die from non-Covid causes as a result of lockdown to devastating official figures in a 188-page document from SAGE.
  • 16,000 people died as a result of the chaos in hospitals and care homes in March and April alone.
  • A further 26,000 will die within a year if people continue to stay away from A&E.
  • An additional 31,900 could die over the next five years as a result of missed cancer diagnoses, cancelled operations and the health impacts of a recession.
  • Official COVID-19 death toll on 29 September 2020 is 41,936.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8785415/Just-1-800-110-000-occupied-hospital-beds-currently-taken-Covid-19-patients.html

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News

How close is the NHS to being ‘overwhelmed’? Just 1,800 out of 110,000 occupied beds are taken up by Covid-19 patients as thousands more than normal die at home of other causes – Daily Mail

Covid-19 patients are currently occupying fewer than 2 per cent of all hospital beds in England, official data suggests.

The most NHS recent snapshot — released three weeks ago — shows just 478 out of 110,000 beds in use were by Covid-19 patients on September 3.

…Even at the peak of the crisis in Britain, only a quarter of all beds were occupied by virus patients. On April 7, 26.5 per cent of the 67,206 people in England’s hospitals were being treated for coronavirus — the highest proportion on record.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8785415/Just-1-800-110-000-occupied-hospital-beds-currently-taken-Covid-19-patients.html